


This House Don't Feel Like Home

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Series: Never Have to Carry More than You Can Hold [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Dad Coulson, Depression, Found Family, Gen, PTSD, Post Maveth, is such a dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 09:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8745688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: Jemma is back. She is safe. She is home. But it doesn't feel like it.Coulson helps Jemma connect for the first time since she's come home.





	

She walks the corridors with one hand against the wall, partly for balance, partly to feel the scrape of bricks against her fingertips, to prove that this is real and she is here.

She is here.

But she still feels she’s walking an alien planet.

Her fingers skim over the rough wood of Skye-who-is-now-Daisy’s door. Agent Johnson who has short hair and is always out in the field with Mack who carries guns and is never in the garage. She touches Bobbi’s door as she passes, Dr. Morse the forensic biologist now running Jemma’s lab, presses a palm to May’s and Hunter’s doors, behind which are only empty bunks.

The base is quiet this time of night, and she likes it better this way. No one to stare at her. Far fewer strange and threatening noises to set her on edge. She tries to remember, as she walks the familiar passages, if this is what they looked like six months ago. More than six months ago.

It’s not such a long time. She was on the Bus longer, spent more time developing the ICER bullets and almost as much at HYDRA. Eventually Maveth will fade, too. The frightening question is whether this place will ever solidify.

Perhaps out of habit too strong to break, she finds herself at the lab. It’s still and empty, the way she’s always loved it best, and she waits for that old sense of tranquility to settle over her like a blanket. But there is nothing there. No nostalgia. No connection. She designed this lab, but it might as well be a stock photo.

She ventures up an aisle, goes to pick up a file to see what they’re working on but finds she doesn’t care. Her hands skim over equipment (left in awful disarray, the part of her that still knows how she should be feeling says in the back of her mind, but she pays little attention), turn dials on microscopes, flick on monitors and swipe through files on muscle memory.

Eventually she ends up in front of her old work station. _Not a post-it out of place_. Her head tilts to the side and she goes to open a drawer, straighten a pile of pens, _something_ , but she can’t bring herself to touch it. It might as well exist in a different dimension. Just like everything and every _one_ else. It looks the same, but this place is not the place she waited so long to come home to, or she isn’t the person it was waiting for, and where is she supposed to go now? Where is she supposed to be?

For six months she had only one goal, one direction, one thing on her horizon keeping her clawing forward, and that was getting back here, but here turned out to be a mirage that she can’t touch or feel or fit into.

“Simmons?”

She whirls so fast she knocks a beaker flying, and the ensuing crash makes her dive to the floor, arms over her head. She doesn’t realize the glass shard is in her hand until she feels the bite of it against her palm, and by then the shadowy figure in the doorway has come close enough for her to see it’s only Coulson.

( _Only Coulson, only Coulson, drop the glass, it’s only Coulson_ )

He kneels a few feet away from her with a grimace of apology. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Should’ve made more noise.”

But she knows that wouldn’t have made a difference. They’d still be right here if he’d knocked or scuffed his shoes in the hallway because this is who she is now, the person who brandishes glass at her colleagues.

It takes a concerted effort to get her fingers to uncurl so the glass can drop to the cement. Coulson gestures to see her palm and after a moment of hesitation she holds it out to him, looking away as he inspects the cut.

“Doesn’t look too bad, but we should get some disinfectant on it,” is his diagnosis.

“Yes, sir,” she manages to murmur, but after several moments without her making a move Coulson takes the initiative.

“Come on,” he says and slides his hands under her elbows to help her up. She wobbles embarrassingly at the sudden change in altitude, so he keeps a steadying hand on her back as he leads the way to the first-aid station in the corner.

“Sit,” he orders, and like an obedient child she drops onto the rolling stool beside the exam table. Coulson gathers gauze and hydrogen peroxide and kneels in front of her. “This’ll sting a little,” he says like she isn’t a physician or a field agent or someone who’s stitched up her own wounds. But then again she did just act like the sky was falling because someone spoke unexpectedly.

“I didn’t think anyone would be in here,” he says as he pours a stream of peroxide over the shallow cut slashing her palm.

Only now does she register how odd it is that _he’s_ down here, and then that he’s wearing workout clothes rather than the suit and tie she’s so accustomed to seeing him in. He must read her question in her expression because he smiles a little as he presses the gauze to the cut and starts winding a bandage around her hand.

“I think better when I run. Wasn’t getting very far lying awake so I figured I’d hit the gym, but then I saw someone was still in the lab….”

“Thank you,” she says, taking her hand back and examining the dressing. Neat and efficient. She presses her thumb into the bandage to feel the sting of the wound and remind herself it’s still there under that clean, white wrap.  She’s distantly aware of Coulson studying her, but everyone is always staring these days so she’s learned to tune it out.

“I’m going to make some tea,” he says abruptly. “Tea and honey. What d’you say to keeping me company?”

Her eyes lift from the bandage to his face. Now that there’s someone next to her, the eerie stillness of the sleeping base has lost its appeal, turned almost frightening. She nods and stands to follow him.

She doesn’t pay much attention to what he’s doing, somewhat dazed by the kitchen lights. They’re not cold and florescent like the lab and the brightness keeps making her blink and squint. Not painful exactly, but distracting.

“Now, apparently, I’m not the greatest tea brewer around,” he says with a slight smirk in his voice because May, Fitz, and Jemma herself have made sure to tell him so many, many times before. “But hopefully you’ll be able to choke it down.”  

The drink is just a bag of supermarket chamomile tea sitting at the bottom of some hot water. It’s bland  and a little sickly-sweet from the honey but the first swallow brings a memory she’d lost track of long ago swelling suddenly to the surface. It tastes exactly like the first and only other cup of tea Coulson made for her, her first week on the Bus.

It’s almost like she’s back there, sitting at the counter pouring over a case and trying to explain undergraduate level chemistry to him. And this is so vastly different, this kitchen and this situation, but the crease of confusion between his brows as he regards her is the same, and every other time they sat at a table, sharing take-out or briefing or debriefing or just trading pages of the newspaper because they both have an affinity for print, they all start to blur together and bleed into this moment.

“Is it really that bad?” he asks in consternation because tears have started to gather at the corners of her eyes and her face is no doubt starting to splotch as her throat tightens painfully.

She swallows hard, takes another gulp of the atrocious excuse for tea, and almost laughs. “Yes, yes, it is.”

He gives a long-suffering sigh and rolls his eyes. “Do you want to show me how it’s supposed to be done?”

She shakes her head, the corner of her mouth actually pulling up into a smile, and takes another sip. Coulson mirrors her, bewilderment still creasing his brow but mixed with something that might be satisfaction. “It’s good to have you home, Jemma.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says, huddling over the warmth of her mug. “It’s good to be back.” 


End file.
